Orange Bees

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO of Professional Ski Instructors of America - American Association of Snowboard Instructors. We're an association that lives in certifies instructors around the country.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Orange Bees?

We wanted to build our own database system and migrate to an open-source system to allow more third-party partners access to our membership data. We wanted to have better plugins and essentially have a stronger database that our member services department and events department could use to program events throughout the winter season.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started almost two and a half years ago through an evaluation system of what are best practices for a membership sized organization like us, with 32,000 members. We needed to know what would fit our needs in terms of plugins, and an API. We have 9 chapters and it's taken time to evaluate what the needs of each chapter would be. It's currently web-based, but we'd like to create a mobile app in the near future. We're still in the process of improving it, overall.

What is the team composition?

My high-level contact is Robert (Owner). My team's main point of contact is a lead designer.

How did you come to work with Orange Bees?

My marketing director found them because we were having a lot of issues having third party customers plug into our CRM. They were one of the only companies that worked well with us to figure out how to easily access our material and write code so that specific companies could work for us. We looked at 3-4 different companies and got quotes when we were diving into this larger project. They quickly rose to the surface as the people we wanted to work with.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in 2019, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

It's been a really successful program. They've done a phenomenal job of being flexible and listening to all of our needs, specifically based on different regions of the country and building a system that's applicable for all of our chapters across the country. 

One of the small successes we had was doing a chapter's dues renewals and seeing a larger penetration of renewals. It was with a chapter that was struggling with retention and it was really nice to see that one of the automated dues renewal applications were successful.

We actually just launched an events registration platform about a month ago. That worked really smoothly and my member services are really happy with it. It's much smoother than our current system. There are glitches, but that's to be expected with any new system. There are no major things wrong.

How did Orange Bees perform from a project management standpoint?

They have weekly meetings with our chapters as well as weekly meetings with our IT manager. It's been really good, especially in the last 5-6 months. In the first couple of months, it took a little bit of time to figure out what our check-in procedure would be and deliverables and timeline. That also had to do with my team being new project managers as well. It took a few months to figure out what the right system was there. Once they came on the scene and really organized it out, it's been phenomenal. We communicate mostly via video chat, and we've also done in-person meetings for the last three months. In January. I found it's a lot more useful to have those personal check-ins along with the video check-ins.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their thoroughness, flexibility, and willingness to work with many different people has been great.

Are there any areas they could improve?

 Clearly defining roles and achievements wouldn't necessarily be a negative on their part, but it would be something they could improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to have clear communication, like in any partnership. They've been great to work with.